Please just fire the guy who mindlesly destroyed dps vanguard and start over. Lowering dmg of a class and absolutely ruining burst dmg at the time when all others have more HP and heals is ridiculous. I dont even get how this person dares to speak here about "good" changes they made to Vanguards.

Constructive feedback from a PT PVE perspective:
Background:
Pre 2.0 I run Pyro spec (without TD) in a progression focused PVE guild, DPS wise I was on par or above compared to skilled maras (didn't have any snipers in our ops group).

Problem pre 2.0:
Pyro: Boring rotation, too ease to put out good DPS numbers, the only thing you had to take care of was not to overheat.
AP: Not competitive dps, and too reliant on the 3s channeled FT cast + a very static rotation
Hybrid: heat issues and still not competitive dps compared to Pyro

Post 2.0:
Pyro: Not really viable in terms of DPS, mostly due to dot nerf (as this was one of the reasons for high and easy dps) . TD still not valid to increase the complexity or fun factor of the rotation.
AP: Same as pre 2.0
Hybrid: Some what DPS viable and a lot of fun, but very hard to get good DPS. In terms of rotation it's pretty close to perfect. You have three dots to keep up, heat management and use of FT while still having alot of rotational freedom.

2.0 Background:
Having done several ops in both HM and SM it's very hard to stay competitive, at best I'm close (within 5%) of a slacking mara when working hard, nailing rotation, using stim and adrenal. On movement related bosses (where FT can't be used effectively) the gap is larger.

Improvement suggestions:
Right now from a PVE DPS perspective there is really only one viable (read best) spec, although there is nothing wrong with the fun factor it could use some love:
- Increase damage from dot bleed and burn damage slightly (this would compensate on movement heavy fights)
- Make FT tick faster or be able to move while channeling at 3 stacks
- Increase damage from shoulder cannon or reduce its CD, this very awesome new ability does very little damage over the cause of the fight. I really like the animation and mechanic of this ability but it doesn't hit hard enough.
- Making Jet charge a base line ability would also be very nice, TBH I don't think it would increase DPS that much as you tend to utelize movement to vent heat. Still it would vastly improve the fun factor of the class.

"DoT Improvements: We’ve changed the way we evaluate damage over time effects, so it should now be less costly to keep your DoTs up and to spread them around." - Improvements? .

"Shield Improvements: We’ve changed the way shields work to allow them to absorb any incoming kinetic or energy damage regardless of the source (melee, ranged, Force, tech – doesn’t matter). This has significantly increased the importance of shields, and the game has been rebalanced to account for such a major adjustment." - A good change, but it should of been like this all along anyway.

Hydraulic Overrides for Everyone!: Hydraulic Overrides is now trainable at level 26 for all Bounty Hunters. This ability grants immunity to slows, immobilizes, and knockbacks and increases movement speed by 30%. Lasts 6 seconds. - Can you quit dumbing down Powertechs/Vanguards?
New Kolto Overload: Kolto Overload has been redesigned. We want this ability to be a powerful survivability tool and give Bounty Hunters something totally unique. The previous Kolto Overload just wasn’t doing it, so we’ve changed it. Now when you use this ability, you gain a Health Monitor for 1 minute. While Health Monitor is active, when your health is reduced to 30% or less, Health Monitor is replaced by Kolto Overload, which rapidly heals you up to 30% health but will not heal you above 30% health. Once Kolto Overload is triggered, you become very difficult to kill for its duration. The Kolto Overload healing effect lasts 8 seconds once triggered. - Prefered it how it was, tanking as Powertech is less forgiving than tanking as a Shadow/Guardian. The small heal on demand was nice for keeping you on your feet and not pressuring the healer, if I'm going to hit - 30% HP in a fight most healers burst heal you back to full anyway. Personally I'd like this change undone OR make it so if you are above 30% HP you recieve a small heal (15%?) then place a Health Monitor on you. It's 'meh' at the moment.

Powertech

Close and Personal: This new passive ability is gained at level 10 upon becoming a Powertech. This ability increases the duration of Energy Shield by 3 seconds, and whenever you suffer direct damage from an area attack, you vent 2 heat and heal for 2.5% of your total health. - Fair enough.
Shoulder Cannon (New Ability): Deploys a Shoulder Cannon that loads missiles over time. Once deployed, the Shoulder Cannon can be used again to fire a missile at the current target. Both deploying the Shoulder Cannon and firing its missiles ignore the global cooldown. Once all missiles have been loaded and fired, Shoulder Cannon goes on cooldown for 90 seconds. I thought this is cool but it hits for less than my auto attack making it 'not so cool'. I think it needs something to make it more appealing and worth working into AP/Pyro's rotations.

Below are some additional details on changes made to the Powertech’s skill trees. Many more skills than the ones mentioned here have changed; these are really just the highlights.
Shield Tech

For 2.0, we wanted to make sure Shield Tech’s active abilities were very attractive. Both Oil Slick and Heat Blast have been overhauled to be more universally awesome. We also wanted to boost up Shield Tech’s utility and group support by way of giving them some area denial and area slows.

Oil Slick: This ability has been slightly redesigned. Now activating Oil Slick sprays the ground beneath you and leaves the ground slicked for the duration. Enemies within the slick suffer a loss of accuracy and move slower. Effectively, Oil Slick now functions as an area control/denial tool in addition to a tanking/survivability tool. -Nice change +1
Heat Blast: This ability has been slightly redesigned. Heat Blast now requires and consumes 3 Heat Screens to deal elemental damage, vent 8 heat, and increase shield absorption by 25% for 6 seconds. This ability is still off the global cooldown.
Heat Screen: Stacks of Heat Screen are now gained slightly differently than before. Shielding an attack or triggering your Ion Gas Cylinder generates a Heat Screen, increasing shield absorption by 1% for 20 seconds. Stacks up to 3 times. Furthermore, each time you build a Heat Screen or refresh your Heat Screen stacks, the active cooldown of Heat Blast is reduced. -I don't know if it's just me but I wish Tank skill procs were more 'noticeable' anyone feel the same?
Flame Engine: This new skill gives your direct damaging attacks a chance to trigger Flame Engine, which makes your next Flame Thrower generate no heat and channel and tick twice as fast. - Nice, hard to notice it trigger though. Needs to be more noticeable though.
Shield Cannon: This new skill increases the damage and threat dealt by Flame Sweep and Shoulder Cannon and causes Shoulder Cannon to heal you for 5% of your health with each missile fired. - Not bad.
Jet Speed: Jet Charge still grants Jet Speed, which increases your movement speed by 30% for 4 seconds. However, while Jet Speed is active, getting attacked now refreshes its duration back to 4 seconds. - Too many movement speed skills, I wish we had more actual utility rather than just running around faster..
Firestorm: This new utility skill causes your Flame Sweep to slow all affected targets by 50% for 6 seconds. - Finally!

Advanced Prototype

Blood Tracker: This new skill increases all damage dealt to bleeding targets. - Nice to see AP getting 'some' love.
Power Loaders: This new skill increases the damage dealt by Shoulder Cannon and causes Shoulder Cannon to immediately load additional missiles. - Cool, shame it hits like wet tissue paper though.
Charged Gauntlets: This skill has been slightly redesigned. Now Charged Gauntlets has a 100% chance to trigger when activating Rocket Punch, but triggering this effect requires High Energy Gas Cylinder to be active. - So long hybrids
Torque Boosters: This new utility skill increases the duration of Hydraulic Overrides by 4 seconds, giving it a total duration of 10 seconds. - Only use Hydraulic Overrides for Flamethrower but hell is that skill ugly, PTF should grant this anyway to make AP even more viable and fluid.
Energy Rebounder: This skill has been moved into the Advanced Prototype skill tree from the Pyrotech skill tree. Now this skill reduces the active cooldown of Energy Shield when taking damage. In addition, when taking damage, you have a chance to deploy an Energy Redoubt, which absorbs a small amount of incoming damage. Lasts 6 seconds and cannot occur more than once every 10 seconds. - Fair does.

Pyrotech (Powertech)

Combustible Gas Cylinder: Now deals less damage but has a higher chance to be triggered. - This is laughable, Bursting Flame and Volatile Igniter gives CGC 100% chance to apply anyway. Why would we need a higher proc chance? Lol. Less Damage? More like half the damage of pre 2.0 CGC. Address this immediately, there was no sense in this nerf at all.
Thermal Detonator: Now when Thermal Detonator explodes, the target is set on fire for the next 12 seconds. - I think you forgot to add that the DoT is half of TD's original damage, no one uses this anyway. Used to be a PvP burst skill, now it's worthless.
Firebug: This skill now increases the critical damage dealt by Combustible Gas Cylinder, Rail Shot, Flame Burst, Incendiary Missile, and Thermal Detonator.
Pyro Shield: With this new utility skill, activating your Energy Shield additionally deploys a Pyro Shield. When attacked, Pyro Shield retaliates by lashing attackers with a significant amount of elemental damage. - I like this change but Pyrotech is worthless now.
Volatile Igniter: Reduces the cost of Flame Sweep and makes your Flame Sweep trigger your Combustible Gas Cylinder on affected targets. - Now I can spread my crappy CGC DoT around yay! This would of been a nice change if you didn't senselessly nerf Pyrotech.
Flame Suit: With this new utility skill, you suffer 30% less damage from periodic damaging effects. - Should be in the tank tree to be honest, but fair enough.
Power Bracer: This new skill increases the damage dealt by Rocket Punch, Incendiary Missile, and Thermal Detonator by 6%. - Pyrotech is useless now so meh.

I fail to understand the reason why you nerfed us so harshly, we were never over powered in anyway. Snipers/Gunslingers can chill at the back of a fight a pump far superior DPS whilst we're shuffling up to an enemy. You killed off Hybrids, now it's basically add a bunch of DoTs then Prototype Flamethrower. Thanks for making my favorite class a bore. Not only have I been criticized in game for my choices as a broken DPS, we will now be even more undesirable choice for endgame DPS. People are favoring ranged DPS and your response is to rub us in the dirt and make us even less viable. I've left 2 guilds due to receiving the 'cold shoulder' because of my class and role, I don't want to be forced into tanking but it's pretty much the only thing left to do. I feel rude joining a group knowing that my damage is far less than it should be. I highly suggest you revert these damage nerfs and start heading in the right direction by addressing this Ranged > Melee argument. In short you've made my favorite class a bore.

I'd like to suggest that you make Jet Charge available as a trainable ability at X level. Why? Warriors/Knights have Force Charge, Consular/Inquisitors have Force Speed and now Operatives/Scoundrels have a roll yet we are a melee ranged class with no way of entering combat fast. This is a constant annoyance when ranged classes etc start combat and for the first few seconds your just shuffling along up to a Boss. This would enable us to leap into the action and not be penalized for being a Melee class. Keep the skills tied to Jet Charge in the Tank tree but replace Jet Charge with a new ability rather than an insulting 1 point skill. "Blazing Tempest (Or something less cheesy) - Ignites a field of oil damaging and lowering the armor of all effected targets by XX% for XXseconds. Generates a high amount of threat. Oil Slick must be active to use this skill.

Undo the damage nerf to Combustible Gas Cylinder, you've killed off the Hybrid specs by making Charged Gauntlets only work with High Energy Gas Cylinder. Make Pyrotech viable again. In no way was this spec overpowered, it was only good for it's burst. DPS over long periods had heat issues.

I strongly believe addressing those 2 things listed above would undo the harm done to Powertechs and I'm more than certain others would agree with me.

This...this is a freaking mess. This is next to useless in PVE whereas Adrenaline Rush used to give me a CONTROLLABLE cd to help out healers during heavy damage phases. It's not like dps vanguards have any other way to boost our health...oh wait, medpacs I don't think I can properly express how much I dislike this new version of Adrenaline Rush.

I'm glad someone else feels this way. I wasn't going to post - I was hesistant to do so because I don't run operations and don't really run flashpoints either, but I greatly prefer the old version of Adrenaline Rush for roaming around running dailies/quests/grouping.

Quote:

I was so very very excited when I first heard about this ability. And then I saw it and was...meh. And then I used it and was like...why am I wasting the time to hit this button? Up the damage this does and then we can talk.

And i'd also agree with this, it's not bad per se, just very underwhelming for something that sounded cool/fun.

Senior Designer, Austin Peckenpaugh, shares details about the class changes to the Bounty Hunter and Trooper now live in Game Update 2.0. Discuss them here!

Pre-2.0 the two most QQ'd about classes were Smashmonkeys and Pyrotechs. You actually buffed Rage (for reasons I'm still trying to figure out), but decided to totally gut Pyro. Not sure why. Honestly, it doesn't matter. Because the fact that you did at all shows how clueless you are when it comes to balance.

So here's what you do: you revert all the Pyrotech nerfs from 2.0. Yes, all of them. We still wouldn't be OP considering we have zero survivability now and every other class has insane burst. Then, you turn the Prototype Cylinders talent in the AP tree into something that isn't totally worthless and insulting for AP players. 1% increased elemental damage? **** off. Seriously. And then you do one of three things: 1) you increase the damage of Immolate by about 40%, 2) you lower the CD of Immolate from 15 seconds to 10 seconds, 3) you give AP players a way to refresh Immolate's CD in a way that Pyro players can refresh Railshot with the PPA talent. Take one of those options, and do it.

Our TTK in either AP or Pyro is ridiculous and far behind every other DPS class/tree except for perhaps Madness. Fix your mistake. I didn't make a bounty hunter/powertech to play a support role (tank). I made it so I could kill people.

So having done some HM and SM Ops with half 63/69 gear I am currently running the 31 pyro spec and pulling decent DPs. I did about 2200 on both the first and second bosses in HM TFB and I have both down pretty solid to have minimal mistakes. I actually start the fight off hitting about 2500/2600 and taper off from there... I do not feel that the AOE particularly helps my numbers much on the first fight, since I get almost no AOE on the second and get the same numbers.

If someone wants to see the parse, I would be happy to upload it... never done that, but can't be too hard.

Now that being said, I was about evenly matched with a jugg and sniper on the first fight. If I recall I actually pulled ahead in both fights. These two are either full 69 or very close. I am certain that the sniper isn't doing the best he could, or maybe I actually play very well. In either case, while I am very apt to believe we are not number 1 anymore, I cannot believe these rediculous posts suggesting pyro is not viable, and you have to run hybrid to even remotely stay ahead. One if you are doing hybrid, you are doing it wrong, latest patch when 2.0 went live nerfed that one.

PvP is another issue altogether and I will gladly agree we suck and are just about worthless. If people leave me alone I can still get kills, I cannot be number 1 on damage, or kills (medals sometimes) but not worthless. The issue comes that I am almost never left alone. Thorn shield and kolto only get you so far by yourself (read without a really good healer)

Quote:

First man says to the second man: Why are you hitting your head against the wall over and over?
Second man responds: Because it feels so good when I stop

The statements and opinions expressed on these websites are solely those of their respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the views, nor are they endorsed by Bioware, LucasArts, and its licensors do not guarantee the accuracy of, and are in no way responsible for any content on these websites.

The statements and opinions expressed on these websites are solely those of their respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the views, nor are they endorsed by Bioware, LucasArts, and its licensors do not guarantee the accuracy of, and are in no way responsible for any content on these websites.